Spruce Pirate

What are you cutting? 2m? 3m? How many bits per tree? Just being nosey.

Pretty standard practice I think. Every now and then get a big chipper in, send a wagon and trailer round to hoover up all the odds and sods left in bings that haven't been collected plus any blow that's been cleared from the roads and left lying at the side and anything else that's worth chipping. Chip it up, sell it on, put the cheque in the bank. Happy days, tidies the place up too.

Thanks for the replies. I'll try and remember and take a couple of pics when I'm done and put them up here.

I've managed to get a few bits of Cedar of Lebanon timber from a recent job, was thinking to get a few of benches out of them, maybe some bird-houses. Am I right in thinking that Cedar is reasonably durable but not construction grade strong? Can some of the resident experts give me some advice? Many thanks.

Put an outer dog on it if you're finding that. Don't have to be massive American style things. I run an outer dog on almost all my saws, normal European style. Got big dogs for some, but only running on the Dolly at present.

In particular, a set of big dogs will go through waterproof trousers if you're not careful. I've got a set of big spikes on my Dolmar and they're good if you really want to dog the saw in, but a bit overkill for most thin barked trees. You also lose a bit of length on the bar. I find it a bit of a pain to keep changing dogs over so tend to stick with one set once they're on the saw.

Forester I used to work for before he retired is looking for someone to take down a small tree for his wife's hair dresser, in or around Dumbarton. He reckons it's about an hour's work - I haven't seen it don't know if that's right or not, also no idea if it is conifer or broadleaf, big/small, good access, BT line, orphanage on one side and nunnery on the other, etc. Anyway, I'm not really interested in it as I'm too far away, flat out at the moment and don't really like domestic stuff at the best of times. Anyone here interested in it? If you let me know I can pass your number on.

Make sure you keep your thumb under the front handle.

Yeah, fair comment. I think the FC will emphasise the "aim" part of their statement.

The info from FC says they'll aim to issue within 10 weeks. There will probably be a restock condition attached to the licence, that might put another spanner in the works depending on why you want to clear the trees. As far as marketing the timber, see if you can track down a local forestry contractor, they'll probably know who might be interested. Where are you?

Don't know about replacement saws, but if you're going the ebay route for selling the 560 I'd chance my arm and put it on at £300. Personally I wouldn't pay more than £100 for a commercially used 560, but with ebay you often find people are prepared to pay over the odds to get a "bargain".

We use the endless loop type slings. Not sure whether they're described as lifting or not, but they work. Remember how you attach the sling to the anchor will affect it's strength rating, either up or down. Most slings I've ever bought have an accompanying diagram to show you the various configurations and effects on strength.

I don't know if things are different with you in the far south, but the guidance I've got for roadside trees and ownership here in Stirlingshire is: Who Owns the Tree? 1. Legal responsibility for a tree rests upon its owner who is usually the personw ho owns the ground in which it grows. If the tree is outwith the road boundary then it is unlikely that the roads authority will own it, unless they have taken out a conveyance on the land. 2. If the tree is within the road boundary it will belong to the roads authority only (a) if they have taken a land conveyance or (b) they planted the tree. Otherwise it belongs to the adjacent landowner because they own the subsoil (or solum)of the verge and carriageway up to the centre line of the road. The Road Boundary 3. If the land has been bought to constructor improve the road the deeds will contain a plan of the legal 'boundary. Where no land has ever been bought the general rule is that the road stretches from fence to fence or hedge to hedge, but does not include the boundary structures themselves. I think it's the last sentence that you want if there aren't any deeds/plans/maps available.

I'm lucky as I've never had a problem with wellies being uncomfortable. If it's a really mucky site I wouldn't look passed the wellies, much easier cleaned and maintained than leather boots.

Aye, I've never had any bother working through the holidays before. Is this WA? I've heard they can be a bit funny out there.

Haven't heard this Johnny, but I'll ask around next week if you want.

There's a few big ones further up to sned out, but all the stuff in the video went straight through the head. You can see the machine in a couple of shots moving and processing stems. JD 1270 if you're into that sort of thing. I think I only ever saw one 575 in the flesh. Our dealer said they wouldn't sell me one! That's how much they thought of it. Be interesting to see how the 572 does when it hits the mass market, big shoes to fill trying to replace the 372. Most of them are pretty straight, there's a few of the larch were quite bendy and leany, but you don't really see it in the video. They've grown pretty well, the map shows it as being P. 54 so a lot of them are pretty skinny for 53 years old, getting heights of between 25 and 30m on average. I don't have a yield table to hand to work out the Yield Class, but can't be too bad. Pretty clean for the most part too.

Always good to give them a wee stroke to get them going!

Quite like it at the moment, but only had it a month or two and this job is its first real bit of work. It's an auto-tune so we'll see how it stands the test of time. So far its been grand, pulling a 24" bar and going through 5L or so of fuel a day without any problems. Heated handles are great in this weather. Think I'll leave the 572 a wee while before getting one, looks nice on the vids Husky have put up, but I'd rather let others do their product testing for them than get one of the first ones. As far as I can see they've tested them all over the world in all climatic conditions, except the incessant rain that we get here, so if anyone from Husky is reading this I'd be happy to give it a wet weather test!

Short video of some downhill felling to the head last month. A few sliding trees and a few bouncing butts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK-Vc4CR3lM

It'll be easy, just cancel everything else and you'll have it all done by Christmas!!

No, Pitlochry would actually be alright for me. The point I was trying to make is that the AA seem to think that its possible to run an event for Scotland in a central location. Hold it in Perth, roughly in the middle, and that will let those from north, south east and west attend. My point is that Scotland is a big place and needs events in multiple locations to be ideal. So a south west event in Dumfries & Galloway, a south-east event in the Borders, a central event in Glasgow/Edinburgh, western events in Oban/Lochgilphead/Fort William, eastern in Dundee/Aberdeen, Northern in Inverness/Thurso/Huntly. Does that explain myself any better?

Realistically there need to be several events to keep the Scottish population happy. For example, I could be wrong, but bear with me. Would you put on an English AA event in say Nottingham in order to attract members from Newcastle and London? It's just under 300 miles from London to Newcastle. About 50 miles less than Dumfries to Thurso, but there's only one location to cover this distance. I fully appreciate that there are more members which make more events viable (I also fully appreciate that I'm not an AA member), but you do seem to expect a lot of people to travel a long way for an event.

https://www.badvo.com/

Totally fair comments, but, people are going to change saws when they come out. Surely better for the factory to get some ideas on how they'll be changed and how the changes will affect it before it enters production? Should be part of R&D should it not? Forgive me if I've missed something, but are we not only talking about adding a set of dogs?